


A Strange, Subtle Alchemy

by Anonymous



Category: Penny Dreadful (TV)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Gen, I promise, None whatsoever, no don't run, there's no sex, yeah it's a/b/o
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-17
Updated: 2014-12-17
Packaged: 2018-03-01 20:52:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2787374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Doctor Victor Frankenstein had thought, perhaps naively, that it wouldn’t matter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Strange, Subtle Alchemy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bienenalster (pinkspider)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinkspider/gifts).



Doctor Victor Frankenstein had thought, perhaps naively, that it wouldn’t matter.  
  
He had, after all, spent most of his life ignoring the dictates, social and biological alike, of his secondary gender. Common wisdom held that people were slaves to their scents. Pheromones saturated the world until everyone reeked of _wantneedtakemewantyouignoremeNOTICEME_. Alphas were said to be competitive if not outright aggressive, always fighting for dominance; Omegas were flighty, moody and indecisive, not to mention wanton; Betas were steady, reliable and bland. That was just the way nature made them. What utter nonsense, Victor had always thought. It was on par with saying all Scorpios were this trait or that.  
  
Current research by experts in the field of endocrinology showed that pheromones, while powerful, did not override free will, innate disposition or learned behavior. All Alphas could learn to curb or control their aggression and work in groups. Some Alphas weren’t even all that invested in the fight for dominance, but explained they felt pressured by those around them, starting with their parents. The education reforms had proved that Omegas were quite capable of the sustained attention span required for advanced studies, though Victor found to his irritation that some people were insultingly surprised to find an Omega in a scientific field. He quickly got sick of their questions, chief among those ‘But how do you manage your heats?’. If they were Alphas, he always felt sorely tempted to get right up into their personal space and ask them ‘I don’t know, how do you manage to have a debate without jumping at your opponent and ripping out his throat?’. He got through his heats like any Omega, by gritting his teeth and enduring the feeling of _need_ and shutting down any Alpha impudent enough to proposition him. He was fortunate in that his heats were short and mild, and when they ended with him still unmated and sane, he took a few minutes to appreciate his luck in having been born in an enlightened age where the rational mind could prevail over base biology.  
  
So when it came to his Creation, he had tended to underplay the importance of the Greek classification. He sought to pierce the veil between life and death, to create something human but not, something better, more perfect. It was hard to imagine the perfect being burdened with these imperfect urges. He had concentrated on the all-important question of how to restart the autonomic nervous system. How to get the brain to fire neurons again, how to get the heart to beat, the lungs to fill and empty on their own. He wanted his Creation to see and hear and move and talk, eat and drink and sleep. He needed to concentrate on essentials. Whether his Creation would be able to sweat, or grow hair, or give off mating pheromones were secondary considerations that could be addressed when it came time to refine the procedure, after he had confirmation that it could work at all.  
  
Besides, the pheromone gland decayed very quickly after death, and the Doctor didn’t think his procedure could kick-start it again. So. That just meant his perfect creation would be free of these biological shackles. He wouldn’t exude scents that compelled others to attack him, or overlook him, or hold him down and fuck him. A new form of human, neither Alpha nor Beta nor Omega. Perfection? Perhaps.  
  
The subject he selected was male, an Alpha in his thirties. White, dark hair, gray eyes. Average build, average height, no obvious defects. Some scarring. Well preserved, overall. A fine subject to be the first to come back from the other side, cleansed and made new.  
  
So, Doctor Frankenstein thought he was prepared. Prepared for fear, confusion, any and all violent emotional reactions. He thought he was prepared for the things his procedure could not help, that perhaps further tests, more research on a living - _living_! - subject could correct: the sallow skin, the bloodshot eyes, the slight bloating, the lack of Scent. He’d been around enough cadavers, he thought, not to be disturbed by any of that on a living being.  
  
So when his Creation rose, frightened and wailing, from its birthing bed, the Doctor wasn’t prepared for the sheer, utter _wrongness_ that hit his senses. What his creation gave off wasn’t the sharp, strong musk of the Alpha he used to be, nor the cloying sweetness of an Omega, not even the neutral blandness of a Beta. It was an absence of everything, a blank, a void, a black hole where a person should have been, where the other senses insisted there was a man, but there couldn’t be, because no human ever smelled like that.  
  
It was unendurable, and Doctor Victor Frankenstein couldn’t help it: he fled from his Creation.  
  


* * *

  
Afterwards, once he had put enough distance between himself and the _thing_ , he calmed down. Once he had eaten and slept, he chastised himself for running away.  
  
He’d always prided himself on being a man of science. Rational. To have fled the scene like a frightened child… Alright, so Scent was more important than he had expected. That meant he would have to find a way to restart the pheromone gland, if the subject’s was still salvageable. If it wasn’t, he would have to find another solution. Nothing was impossible. He would just have to go back to the lab and…  
  
He tried. He wanted to. Every day he would take his hat and his coat and set out toward the building that housed his laboratory. But he would get halfway, and then he would balk. He would stand there in the middle of the street and he would think of that awful nothing-smell and his feet would refuse to carry him any further. Like a coward, he would retreat.  
  
By the time he worked up the courage to enter his lab, the wretched thing he had created was gone.  
  


* * *

  
Doctor Victor Frankenstein was a stubborn man. It just wasn’t in him to give up after a setback, no matter how embarrassing. He had the procedure down now. It demonstrably worked. Simply, he told himself, he would have to work on the problem of the pheromones. His next subject should preferably be a Beta. Perhaps that would mitigate the wrongness of the smell. There was little more than he already did that he could legally and morally do to ensure freshness. So perhaps he should concentrate on masking the problem. Perhaps a study of scent compatibility would prove fruitful.  
  
Biology decreed that Alpha belonged with Omega, Beta with Beta. Compatible smelled desirable, incompatible repelled. Society in turn decreed that Alpha-Alpha was a sin, a crime against nature, an abomination unto God. The idea of a relationship between two Omegas was considered too ludicrous to even contemplate. And yet there had always been people who loved against nature and had found secret ways to defy biology and society both. There were, it was whispered, very exclusive gentlemen’s clubs where deviant Alphas could meet like-minded Alphas. And Omegas had always excelled at getting their way behind the backs of their watchers. Throughout history, these men and women who dared to defy fate had found ways to be with the ones their soul called ‘beloved’ even when their senses insisted, ‘rival’. It was said they chewed on certain herbs, used special cologne to mask their own Scent.  
  
He would have to find out how exactly they did it and see if their methods could be adapted to his needs. But first he would have to find his way to this demimonde, and convince them to help him, when they risked arrest merely by talking to him. He would have to be persuasive, that was all.  
  
His dream still burned inside him, after all. He would do it. He would pierce the veil. He would create his perfect New Man. And this time, Doctor Victor Frankenstein wouldn’t run away.  
  



End file.
